Shades Of
by Magyck Ravan
Summary: In order to keep the pieces, one must create a whole thing to keep the pieces safe. They weren’t that different, in the first place.


**Title:** Shades Of

**Rating:** G/PG, maybe, if you squint.

**Summary:** In order to keep the pieces, one must create a whole thing to keep the pieces safe. They weren't that different, in the first place.

**Author's Note:** Yeah. I don't own DN Angel or any of the characters within. They all belong to Yukiru Sugisaku and whomever owns his soul.

_I can't stand you and I don't want you to touch me._

Damnit, yes, I do.

--

None of them are any different than the other, and none of them feel quite real anymore. Dark wakes in Daisuke's head, and his first instinct is to stretch out and grab the boy, but he can't touch the flesh, press up against him to quell the sudden panic.

Daisuke wakes up with the irrational urge to be held, to touch black wings and iced skin and feel safe.

Satoshi's skin aches every time he walks past Niwa, or touches, or hears his voice echoing in his ears, in his head. Need and want are blurring so sharply that it's a tangible pull.

Krad wakes in Satoshi's head laughing every moment of the day, because Satoshi is his and will always be his. He can make sure of this, can keep the white feathers binding the iceboy, and can bide his time as he always has, waiting for Dark to slip, waiting for the flesh to rend and tear and Satoshi to become him for him to become Satoshi. What is his is his and he will steal to claim.

He wakes up not wanting to destroy, but to take.

Satoshi doesn't recognize this, Daisuke doesn't notice the blurring between the Tamers and the Tamed.

Dark tastes it and knows the end is coming.

--

_I don't want pieces, I want all of you._

I want--

**Of course you do.**

I need. You and him and us and everything. I am you and him and him, and I need the pieces to make the whole worth it.

_Did I say 'want'?_

--

They aren't so very different from each other and it's beginning to fall apart at the seams.

Them, all of them, the full four flipped coins, are like magnets switching poles. Pulling apart and together at the same time. An incoherant, incohesive whole.

Emiko's missions are quieter, now. Kosuke's watching his son's back with caution, waiting for Daisuke to turn and be Dark, to hear the seamless blending of the voices. They are the last generation, it's appearing; all of this is going to either become one or rip and tear the rest to pieces. To so many shards of one more mirror.

Daisuke's begun slipping in and out some days, falling back into the shared space and letting them split a voice, because this is good. This is comfortable, and this is helping. He tries to retain his identity, but still, there's that need to know what Dark's true skin feels like, what the feathers are like when they're not falling. Dark shifts as he can, adjusting the clothes, keeping the parts together as well as possible, because he will not lose Daisuke in himself. Daisuke doesn't need that blackness.

And he needs Daisuke.

Commander Hiwatari doesn't notice. Doesn't care. Satoshi spends most of his days on the laptop or asleep. When not chasing Dark. When not shaking for black feathers and red hair. When not waking up and not remembering exactly who he is, and where he stands anymore-- he can hear Krad's voice in his words, Krad's fingers in his hair. Pieces of Satoshi are slipping away, and pieces of Krad are beginning to filter in and slide into the gaps.

--

_I need both of you._

**I am both of you.**

_Don't touch me. Please. Oh, god, don't--_

--

"It's called Merging."

Kosuke whispers this to Emiko at night, curled around her safely in bed. One hand flexes, clutches at her. "Merging. Dark is becoming Daisuke, who is in turn becoming Dark. Satoshi's probably doing it, too."

She shivers, and then flinches. "What? Are we losing Daisuke?"

Kosuke shakes his head, buries it in the crook where her neck and shoulder meet. "No. We're getting a different one."

"Then stop it!" She starts to shift and jerk away, jerking the covers back around her waist.

Laughing bitterly against her skin, Kosuke sighs. "I can't, Emiko. You can't. Dark can't. They're not all that different, the four of them."

For an instant, he realizes that this is the wrong thing to say to the woman that he loves, but isn't in his research, doesn't rifle and pick at his thoughts. She growls, low, and leans forward, inches from his face. "I'm not losing him."

Softly, "I never said you were."

Because Kosuke knows that one day, Daisuke will wake up with slit-pupiled eyes and inhuman grace, but his voice will be Daisuke, and there'll be that laugh-- that slow, liquid slide of sarcasm that won't be Daisuke's at all. And Satoshi will wake up with his hair and alien eyes, with ice in his voice and the carefully controlled tension in his gaze gone, because enough of the voice has become his that he doesn't need to hide.

The end is coming, and it won't be the same.

--

_Please._

**Just once.**

_We're both going to die._

**Please.**

--

_(fin)_


End file.
